As the documetary hits rock bottom, Bassem Deaïbess, activist and frontman of Beirut thrashers BLAAKYUM says some simple words to his good friend Shery Bechara, lead guitarist and main songwriter of SLAVE TO SIRENS, Lebanon’s first and only all-female thrash band, which describe both the virtue and the core problem of her band: „Metal is about 100% pure sacrifice. You know what the problem is when you’re an all-female band? You don’t have any reserves. When male bands fight with one guitarist, they just get another one.“ Even in Lebanon, a country with a small but dedicated metal scene, things work like that. The five SIRENS, however, are completely dependent on each other, especially considering their ambitious goals to make a living from their music, even becoming rock stars. Rita Baghdadi’s profound documentary about the inner and outer struggles of the five young women at various turning points of their lives as private individuals, as a band and as a nation takes us into the reality of the Middle East we usually don’t get to see like that …
But it is not the naïve dreams of some self-absorbed girls that this touching and thrilling film illuminates, but the only realistic chance for the five young women to escape a politically torn, economically decaying country shaken by corruption and unrest, which cannot offer them – all of them with a university education! – any real professional and personal prospects, as the traditional women’s…